It only took several more steps into that darkness for Val to realise that she was no longer in the temple — she may not even be on Taris' moon anymore. The blackness around her became more than simply shadows beyond her reach; she had entered into the cosmic void itself. The darkness here existed nowhere else in the universe, only in the chaos between stars where no mortal being was ever supposed to tread.

The ground beneath her feet disappeared and she walked on air, aimlessly ventured forward into the abyss. There was no guiding light, no path to follow as she gave herself wholly to the darkness, and prayed for salvation.

The black veins beneath her skin were pulsating and harsh, as though straining to be released from the prison of her flesh. They were spreading across her body, burrowing deep and infecting her bones and blood — it was becoming more a part of her than she was. Soon it would reach her brain, her heart, and then there would be nothing left of her at all.

Searing pain overcame Val suddenly, like a kyber-hearted star was burning her from the inside out, incinerating the poison and her along with it. She collapsed to her knees, pressing her palms against the side of her skull, as though the pressure would ease the pain — it didn't. Val screamed in agony and the world turned blindingly white.

Shrilling bells rang in her head, overpowering all her other senses amid the sea of emptiness. If the darkness before was the chaos between stars, then this... this was the supernova core itself.

A gentle rustling reached her ears, overpowered by the ringing but just noticeable beneath the cacophony of noise. Val blinked the haze away from her eyes and the white began to fade. Slowly, she found herself standing not in an empty abyss, but in the dark creaking confines of Rolfe's office on the Reaper.

She sat in the chair before his desk, her hands folded in her lap, like she had done a hundred times before. Rolfe sat across from her. He leant back in his chair, surveying her with a cold, calculated stare. His disapproval radiated out in infecting waves, his toxin invading her mind and soul as she desperately tried not to meet his eyes.

"You've disappointed me, Seaflyer."

He spoke the words calmly, quietly — as though he had expected this, as though her betrayal was only a matter of time. Val hung her head further, her bruised jaw pressing down against her chest.

"I'm sorry," She said quietly. It was the only thing to be said; there was nothing that could quell his rage — she knew it from experience.

The temperature in the room fell to well below freezing as his penetrating gaze bore straight into her chest, drilling deep down to see whether that cavity had begun to beat once more.

"You're sorry?" He repeated, an edge creeping into his tone. "You're sorry you betrayed your crew, your family, your Captain?"

"I didn't betray you." She said lamely, shrinking back into the chair and wishing the universe would swallow her whole once again. In all her years, she'd experienced few things worse than this, few things worse than his burning inescapable rage.

Rolfe stood suddenly, his own chair skidding backwards and toppling over. The resonance of his words echoed and boomed within Val's mind as he yelled. "You stole the Jedi from my brig, you commandeered my ship, you humiliated me in front of the Count. You betrayed everything I have done for you. I saved your life and this is the thanks I receive."

"You never saved me." Val said boldly, a spark of heat returning to her aching soul. "You destroyed who I was, you turned me into a monster."

"Oh Seaflyer," Rolfe said as he stood upright, as his anger dissipated like a facet had run dry. "I never made you into anything you weren't already."

Val's eyes widened as her reality began to crumble. Her words were heated and heavy as she struggled to get them out before the office disappeared into nothing. "I was good before you, before you ruined the child I was. Before you destroyed the Jedi I could have been."

The office faded completely, Rolfe's silhouette a distant memory as Val began falling through worlds. An echoing voice slithered across her skin, speaking whispered truths into her ears.

"There is no place in the Jedi, for a child made of darkness."

Val's body slammed against a steel frame, her head snapping up as she found herself suddenly in the brig of the Reaper, on the wrong side of the plasma bars and cuffed to the wall. The chains around her wrists rattled loudly as Val struggled against them, against the metal cutting deeply into her wrists — blood welled up beneath the manacles and stung her fragile skin, sending a burning sensation rushing up through her arms as the liquid spilt over the sides and dripped onto the floor.

"It's harder to look when the blood is yours, isn't it."

Val's head snapped up. Across from her on a crate against the left wall, beyond the cell, sat Rowan with an empty look in her eyes. Val's mind buffered for a moment as she gazed at her friend, unable to comprehend the events occurring around her.

"What?" She said confusedly, her gaze flickering about as she tried to discern an answer to her question when Rowan offered none.

Rowan sat quietly, expectantly — waiting for Val to speak. Her throat closed up suddenly and the words refused to bleed past the confines of her tongue. She squeezed her eyes shut and hung her head, trying to force air into her lungs. The incessant ringing began building to a crescendo once more, drowning out all sounds, all thoughts, all emotions. Her eyes flew open.

There, before her on the cold steel floor, spelt out with the blood from her battered wrists, was a single word.

Guilty.

The cell walls began to impose around her, pushing in and constricting her breath, her heartbeat. The ringing had returned in full force, and Val fell forward clumsily into her hands. The biting pain in her wrists refused to cease, only cutting deeper and deeper into her veins.

"Guilty?" She murmured, her mind fogging up like a mirror clouded by steam — she could no longer recognise her own reflection. "Guilty of what, Rowan?"

It wasn't that she had no guilt, quite the opposite — there were too many instances it could be referring to, too many mistakes still unpaid for.

"You'll see, Val." Rowan replied evenly, unfazed by the darkness closing in around them, choking the life from the universe with a burning fist. "You'll see him again, soon."

Him?

"Who is him?" Val asked, dreading the response but somehow knowing it was part of the solution she needed to survive— answers, so she could make it home. Home to Anakin.

"The one who started it all. And the one who ended it all."

A new question formed on her lips but she couldn't ask it as an invisible force propelled her weakened body hazardously forward, collapsing onto her bleeding arms. Her queries were lost as agony ricocheted through her body at tenfold the level it had been prior.

"Rowan, please help me." She whispered breathlessly, her vision wavering and blurring until her hands were merely masses of colour and shape before her. Eventually, the world turned black, her sense of sight robbed completely. "Get me out of here. Please, Rowan, I can't take it anymore."

There was no response from her friend for a long moment, long enough for Val to think she had disappeared — disappeared along with the remnants of Val's own sanity. Sound was the only sense she had left. That, and the chilling metal floor that groaned beneath her shaking fingers as the world began to cave in.

"I can't, Val." Rowan replied at last, her voice cold and empty and distant — she was fading away, out of Val's reach once again. "Only you can."

The hull began to crack and splinter, coming apart like it was being torn in two by the suffocating currents of space. It was an implosion that would leave hundreds to drown in the crushing void of a starless sea — and Val was one among them. One more soul left to the mercy of the tide.

She could not see her world as it turned to ash, as the only home she'd known for four years was consumed by a dark fire whose searing heat was all she could feel. She was tossed amid the blackened ocean waves once more, set adrift — lost in her own mind.

Silence.

An empty world one moment, a restless nothingness that clung to her bones and breath, and then blaring sight and sound and thought and colour once more. Lights flickered distantly into existence, reality snapping back into place like a rubber band pulled taut and then released — her body shook from the whiplash and the edges of her vision turned black.

Coruscant sat upon a burning pedestal before her, an entire planet held within the palm of her hand. She saw the Jedi, proud and cunning and powerful, patrolling their golden halls like the world belonged to no one but them — like this world was one that would never be hers again.

She saw herself, honey-haired and bright eyed, flitting through the temple corridors on a breath of air, running and jumping and spinning. Shadows receded and shrunk away as she skipped towards them, her young body and eager mind weightless and worthwhile. Everything was as it should have been; light to brighten the dark, love to warm the cold.

Beside her, tall and strong and alive, was her Master. He smiled at her dancing form as she continued twirling along the halls, a ball of life and laughter amid the stoicism of the Jedi. A shadow boy stood at the temple's edge, watching her laughing and living from the darkness of the golden walls with a wondrous smile on his face. He never learnt her name, he rarely saw her face for more than a flash, but he knew her laugh by sound alone.

Valerie, however, never saw him at all, as they began the journey to their next Sith artifact that required Master Alden's cleansing touch. They had dressed for cold; layered with thicker versions of their Master and padawan uniforms, topped with fur hoods and heavy soled boots.

Val watched, a strange dread settling into the cavity below her ribs. She watched as their small forms, so frail, so breakable, made their way to the ship port to find their transport. They came upon a Republic gunship soon enough, and Val knew its name before Valerie was even close enough to read it.

The dark silver of the Reverence shone brightly beneath the Coruscanti sun, and Val's heart began to splinter. She knew where that ship was headed, and she knew exactly what was coming. The crystal ball of Coruscant hardened and froze in her hand, and then she found herself within the swirling blizzard of Krownest.

Cold encased her, embedding shards of ice into her bones and expelling itself as frost from her breath. She could do little else but place one foot in front of the other in endless fashion, and try not to tumble down the tundra slopes to her death.

Her Master walked sure-footed behind her, ready to reach out and grab her in case she slipped — it was his intense focus on her safety that ultimately cost him his life.

She should have seen it coming. Her textbooks on battle strategy had all warned her about attacks from above, about the advantage of the high ground — and the subsequent disadvantage of being caught off guard. They barely stood a chance when the droid battalion descended on them from out of the blue, lying in wait from the snowbanks.

Her fingers were stiff and frozen as she reached for her lightsaber, shaking from frostbite and fright. Her Master had sprung into action much faster, his lightsaber a whirl of plasmatic green as he jumped in front of her and began deflecting the blaster fire.

These were a type of enemy that was foreign to them at the time, in the era before the war of the droid battalions and the clone army. The enemy they could recognise, one carved from myth, was the Sith stalking the backlines of the battle, their blood red lightsaber scraping across the frozen ground.

When Valerie finally managed to get a shaky grip on her weapon, it was only a matter of seconds before a well-placed blast had the lightsaber tumbling out of her grip. Valerie dove to retrieve her sacred weapon before it could be lost to the white expanse, momentarily forgetting the battle that rang around her as the instilled instinct to safeguard her lightsaber consumed her.

She realised her mistake too late.

Her back to the mechanical aggressors, she was left defenceless as a droid took deadly aim. Her life would have ended, should have ended, in a cataclysmic flash of red blaster fire and white snow in that moment — had it not been for the reckless, selfless nature of her Master, and his protection of her life that he deemed more valuable than his own.

He threw himself in front of her, his exposed back shuddering as the fatal blaster bolt found its mark. He collapsed by her feet, his breath frosting the air in strained bursts. His bright, cleansing light began to fade from the earth, carried away into the breeze.

The darkness began to thrive and grow ravenously within her chest, arising from the chasm between her lungs, consuming emotion after emotion — lapping up her poisoned blood and broken tears. It had been waiting for this, she realised, waiting for the day when the chaos within her was greater than the chaos surrounding her.

Val watched, helpless from the abysmal aether, as the young girl unleashed a hellish scream; the darkness exploded into the snowy clearly in blinding bursts of reddish blackness. The droid battalion was disintegrated by the hellish dark fire, pooling into puddles of molten metal in an instant and melting into the once pristine snow. The Sith was too late to shield herself as the hellfire reached her too, scorching her pale skin and injecting agony into her veins that would last a lifetime — the parting gift of chaotic dark blood scars began staining her skin, remaining there for all time.

Val watched, transfixed and horrified, as her young body collapsed into fitful exhaustion by her Master's side. Renfri's words came back to her in blinding flashes of light, a break in the endless white.

There's more to that day than you know... or remember.

She was right. By the Force, she had been right and Val had never known. It explained everything and yet nothing all at once. The darkness that lurked within her veins had been released that day, chaos to feed chaos, pain to fuel pain. It all made perfect sense, how she survived, why her memory seemed disjointed and faded, why the black veins had returned now to consume her being.

She had tapped into the same explosive primordial darkness in that arena, when her black artifice had returned after all these years of restless dormancy — only this time, it refused to be shunned and silenced the same way.

Now, it would consume her for good.

Val watched, her heart merely a fractured open wound in her chest, as Valerie used her last dregs of energy to crawl to her Master's side, to curl into a ball with her head on his chest and pretend he was merely dozing. He would be here, happy and whole again, when she woke up — or else, she would simply never wake up again.

A dull ringing, a gentle lullaby reached Val's fading ears, words carried on a breath of cold mountain wind, remnants of a memory — of another time.

Can you hear me, Lightbringer?

Yes, Master.

Listen to me, star child. I died that day.

No. Tears began to stream onto the cold earth, freezing over in an instant as she devoured the last of his words — the last moment she had with him, lying motionless on the frozen ground, a million light years from home.

Nothing you do can bring me back.

You can't be gone. Not now, not when I've spent so long searching — so long holding on.

My dear, there was never anything to hold on to.

The frozen ground began to splinter and crack beneath her feet, leaving the path open to the voidless white to swallow her whole. Her Master's body began to disappear into nothingness, the last moments she had with him fading away. A shrill ringing reached a cacophony in her ears, overpowering her sight and senses and leaving her vulnerable to the all consuming white.

She was floating, directionless, in the abyss of an inverse space — instead of being surrounded by infinite possibilities, she knew for certain she was alone in this vast nothingness. She considered fading, giving up after a lifetime of selfish spite and perseverance. What was really left to hold onto now? He was gone. He was really, truly gone. His physical form was torn from this world — she almost wished her memories of him would disappear as well.

Tears slipped down her cheeks, suspended beside her like dew droplets in the void. She watched the water particles float, unresponsive to the fact that the ringing had begun to subside and was being replaced by the faintest gentle lull of a steady melody. The words were mumbled and faint, she could not place the tune or the lyrics, but it was enough to make her try.

Struggling to gain any kind of control over her motion, Val floated onwards towards the gentle song. The whiteness before her began to fade, revealing a sliver of soft yellow light and faint droning of machinery, a break in the endless expanse.

Val began moving quickly towards the slim gap in the nothingness, passing swiftly through the divide. The familiar grip of gravity overcame her once more as she emerged onto a familiar rooftop, and found herself looking down at the bustling city of Coruscant.

She looked on in shock, entirely convinced she had revisited a memory from deep within her own mind. None of her other encounters had been bright like this, hopeful and whole. Before her, legs crossed with a bundle of fibre grass in her small hands, sat a young Valerie — younger than her padawan self. Now closer to the sound, Val was able to finally recognise the lullaby she sang.

Mirrorbright, shines the moon, its glow as soft as an ember
When the moon is mirrorbright, take this time to remember
Those you have loved but are gone
Those who kept you so safe and warm
The mirrorbright moon lets you see
Those who have ceased to be
Mirrorbright shines the moon, as fires die to their embers
Those you loved are with you still —
The moon will help you remember

Memories came rushing back to Val like a tidal wave pulled out to sea; gentle mornings walking along the coastline, basket weaving with her mother by the seaside, soft lullabies by the winter's fire, waiting impatiently at the door for her father to come home from his work at the palace.

Do you remember?

I remember you.

And she truly did. She remembered training with her Master in the Jedi temples, she remembered visiting markets and parades with her youngling friends. Going back even younger, she remembered her water skiff on the open ocean, her figure barely more than a flash of sea spray and ocean breeze.

She remembered her mother, dark haired and warm smiles, waiting for her with a towel and a picnic basket on the sand bar. She remembered her father, a bellowing laughter and strong, steady arms hoisting her giggling self high into the air.

She remembered it all.

Her memories would be with her always, even if her loved ones themselves could not be. Her mother, her father, her master; they were all beyond her reach. But the memories she kept, guarded in the hallowed halls of her heart, would never leave her.

"It's taken you a long time to get back here."

Valerie didn't look up as she spoke, hyper fixated on the delicate weaving in her hands. Val took it as an invitation to sit, her legs dangling over the side as she sat beside her younger self.

"I'm sorry. I'm here now." Val said softly, savouring the Coruscant skyline at sunset like it was the first time she'd ever seen it — or the last. "But I don't know how long I have left."

Valerie's hands stilled, and Val was able to get a glimpse of what she was crafting — a miniature figurine set sat in her hands, three larger figures and a smaller one in the centre. It was a family, she realised, crafted from fibres and twine; the family she had always wanted. Her mother, her father, her Master... and her.

Val looked down, startled, when she suddenly felt soft grass beneath her own calloused fingers. There, laying delicately in the centre of her palm, were two grown figures holding hands — she didn't need distinctive features to know who they were. The crux of Val's new reality, the only person she wanted to be beside now.

"You haven't lost him, you know." Valerie spoke gently, resuming her work as though this was a mere passing conversation and not the hinge of Val's whole existence — as though she wouldn't do absolutely anything to get back to Anakin. "And you don't have to."

Val sighed, a shuddered breath leaving her bruised lungs as she leant back to watch the golden sun sink below the horizon. "I'm dying, kid. Whatever is inside me is killing me, turning me into a monster."

Val remembered how she'd felt in that arena, the sheer exhilarating power that had consumed her whole being — but the rage at her fingertips wasn't what had scared her. No, what she was scared of was how addicting that power had been — how badly she wanted to feel powerful again.

Valerie laughed, high and light, and Val came back to the moment. "Don't you remember what Rowan said?"

Val paused, raising an eyebrow in confusion and inviting her younger self — who seemed to know vastly more than she did — to elaborate. The golden haired girl giggled, seeming to find a childlike amusement in all this. "Rowan taught you about monsters. They're not born, they're made, silly."

"And they can be unmade." Val said, realising where this conversation was leading. "You're saying there's something that can save me?"

Valerie hummed in affirmation, tying off the last thread of her four doll family. Val breathed deeply, coming to terms with the new information.

"How?" She asked, desperate to survive now that she knew she could. "How do I do it? Where do I need to go?"

Valerie looked up, her irises catching the last rays of the dying sun — the setting of an era. "To find your way back to the light, you must go to the heart of the darkside."

Val stared at her confusedly, though her heartbeat spiked in fear all the same. Valerie met her eyes finally, the bluish-grey fading to pure white. "Don't worry, you'll never be alone."

Val looked down sharply to see the figurines had moulded into a holographic image, a moment suspended in dim blue light — it was Val and her Jedi Knight, their arms entwined around each other so tightly, slowly swaying in the sparse dawn.

"You have him now, the one you've really been searching for."

I'm not going anywhere.

Coruscant split down the centre and she faded into the light once more, for the last time. A gentle breeze and a softer lullaby enveloped her, a distant memory of home and, for the first time in a lifetime, she didn't feel so lost.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"I'm not going anywhere. I don't care what happens, I'm not leaving you."

His voice was the first thing she heard; even when sleep still had its fitful grip on her, nothing could erase his voice. He was mumbling, his speech jumbled as though he was struggling to get the words out in time. Arms were wrapped tightly around her waist, a solid weight against her back that she knew had to be him.

Her eyes flickered behind her closed eyelids, before painfully opening to the toxic light. She found herself on the broken steps of the temple, back on Taris' desolate moon. Anakin's chest rose and fell in steady breaths behind her, his black-clad arms encircling her collapsed form.

Distant voices reached her ears amid the residual ringing from her voyage through memories, gruff male voices speaking harshly to an electronic pulsing voice. She began to shift in Anakin's arms, trying to angle herself to see his face. His arms tightened around her, inhibiting her movements entirely.

"Don't move, pretend to still be unconscious." His voice was strained and mumbled, as though trying to conceal his speech. "We'll only get one shot at this."

Val pushed her confusion aside and quieted her thoughts, slipping away from herself and into his mind. What's going on?

Anakin huffed a laugh, murmuring quietly. "Give me a second, I'm not as good at that as you are."

Several quiet moments passed as Anakin struggled to reign in his racing mind and concentrate long enough to share his thoughts with her. Images and words passed swiftly between them, faster than a comet shooting across the star-speckled night sky.

She saw herself collapsing before the altar with bloodied hands, Anakin catching her just before her head hit the cracked marble. She watched as he held motionless form for hours on end, the even rise and fall of her chest the only indication she was still alive. She watched as the surprise attack came faster than Anakin could anticipate; he lost the battle quickly, his focus entirely on protecting her as she traversed through dazed hallucinations.

Val saw one of the two assailants relieve Anakin of his lightsaber, hooking it onto his own belt for safekeeping. She understood their situation quickly, a pit settling into her stomach as she saw through Anakin's eyes — their hands were both bound, and the bounty hunters were speaking in hushed tones to the flickering projection of Count Dooku.

Anakin was right, they only had a slim window of opportunity to catch their captives off-guard and escape. She settled back into her unconscious state, lying silently in wait for the opportune moment. The ground trembled slightly as the bounty hunters walked over to them.

She had no senses to consult other than her hearing, so she listened as a hard, spiteful voice spoke to Anakin. "Time to go, Jedi."

Her body shook as Anakin jerked away suddenly, a biting venom to his tone as he seethed. "Don't touch her."

A harsh laugh sounded quickly, before she was roughly pulled out of Anakin's arms and upwards, thrown harshly over someone's shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll take good care of your girlfriend."

Her vision flickered rapidly between the blackness of her own eyelids and the hazed view of Anakin's as she tried to get a bearing on her surroundings. She saw through his eyes that she had been slung over the shoulder of the hunter who had taken the lightsaber.

The bare bones of a plan formed in her mind, and she spared it no further thoughts as she sprung into action. She quickly reached around his back for Anakin's lightsaber with her bound hands, gripping the hilt and throwing her weight forwards.

The hunter lost his balance and let Val go, allowing her to fall into a combat roll and come up in a crouched attack position with the plasmatic blue saber flaring to life in her hands.

Her eyes darted between the two captives, and Anakin restrained behind them. The lightsaber flickered and dimmed in the pale wind, and her eyes tracked the bounty hunter's movements as their fingers itched towards their blasters.

In a split moment, the bounty hunters fired in unison and Val spun on her heel to duck the blasts. She blocked their next strikes with deadly efficiency, her years of training seeming to resurface in her moment of need.

Using their distraction to his advantage, Anakin managed to untie his ropes and surprise the hunters from behind. Raising his hands high into the air, the two men rose in unison, weightless for a moment before Anakin jerked them sharply together, rendering them unconscious on impact.

Val cut through her bonds and deactivated the lightsaber a heartbeat later, once she was certain the danger had passed. She stumbled to her feet, her dazed body struggling to keep up with her rapid mind. Anakin was at her side in an instant, encircling her waist and pulling her tightly against him.

She seemed to melt in his embrace, the adrenaline and fear fading immediately. She reached up and wrapped her arms around his neck, his lightsaber still clutched within her white knuckles. They stayed, simply holding each other, for the longest moment — it took all her will to pull away, though she stayed comfortable in the circle of his arms.

"We need to go," She whispered, her hands braced on his upper arms to steady herself. "Dooku could be here any minute."

Anakin nodded, only half aware of the danger as his mind continuously failed to process that she was alright — that she was warm and safe and whole in his grasp. Val seemed to sense his lingering paranoia, because she leant forward once again, pressing her body against his like she could ground him with nothing more than her touch — the remarkable thing was that she really could.

He sighed, his breath ragged as he raked a hand through his hair. "Yeah okay, let's go."

Val nodded, threading her bruised fingers through his and making the short trek back to the Dawn Chaser. His lightsaber stayed clutched in her hand and Anakin made no move to retrieve it; as though knowing she had it meant she was always protected by him.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Despite however the bounty hunters had managed to track them to Taris, they never managed to find the ship nestled in the undergrowth of the barren forest. Anakin held his thumb against the print scanner and the large steel door began to lower smoothly. Once inside the warm interior of their ship, Val finally started to feel truly safe again. She knew she was always safe by Anakin's side, but here, it would only ever be them.

Still, that knowledge did not stop her from doing a once over of the ship, investigating every room and corner to ensure no other surprises lingered beyond the scope of their vision. Anakin watched her sweep with sad downturned eyes, and she knew he had already scanned the ship with his supernatural sight the moment they had entered — it didn't matter really, it was less about the presence of danger and more about the physical act of ensuring his safety, of making sure he would always be alright — whether she was with him or not.

He did the same for her, at every turn — neither of them could bear the thought of the other hurt and they were both slowly realising that this relentless drive went deeper than mere friendship. It was the blood of stars that fueled their bond — a thread of pure cosmic light that could not be dimmed, nor broken. It was a cord that was not merely wrapped around her heart, it was her heart.

There were only so many places she could search, and so many moments she could delay this conversation. Anakin was waiting for her in the main room, sitting on the sofa with his arms resting on his knees and his head down. He could likely sense the thoughts running through her mind at breakneck pace, but held off from prying further — he knew she would tell him as soon as she had come to terms with it herself.

Val sighed deeply, running her hand through her hair as she finally turned to face him. The words she had planned in her mind lodged in her throat as soon as she met his gaze, and saw the unadulterated fear harboured there. All at once, thought for her own turmoil vanished and was replaced by overwhelming concern for him.

She went to her knees before Anakin, taking his hands into her own. What's wrong?

He laughed sharply, a wet rasp to his words as he spoke aloud. "I don't know if it thrills me or scares me, how easily you can do that."

The corner of Val's mouth tilted up into a smile as she spoke silently again. You could do it too if you tried.

Anakin smiled, cupping her cheek and pressing their foreheads together. "I much prefer hearing your voice aloud, that way I can hold onto the sound."

Val felt her cheeks flush scarlet and was thankful for the position they were in, so Anakin could not see what he did to her. His breath was warm on her face and she could feel his rapid pulse beneath her fingers.

"What's wrong?" She asked again, breathing the words into the cold air.

Anakin licked his lips, sniffing as he took his time to answer — as though merely speaking the words would bring his terror back. "You just collapsed, back at the temple. Your eyes rolled back into your head and you just...fell."

He shook his head, leaning away from her and back into the couch. He spoke more rapidly, as though his fear from early had resurfaced. "You were barely breathing, and nothing I did woke you up. I... I thought you were going to die. And then the hunters showed up and I wasn't prepared, and all I could try to do was keep them away from you but-"

Val cut him off, sliding onto the sofa beside him. "Oh Anakin, I'm sorry. I didn't mean for this to happen, but I knew you wouldn't agree with my plan-"

"Because it was stupid, Val." He said tersely, staring at her harshly with watery eyes. "You sacrificed blood to a darkside temple, do you have any idea how dangerous that was?"

Val stopped, all her arguments dying in her throat as she gazed into his ice blue eyes. Her expression softened and she spoke gently, "It was the only way. And there's no point in dwelling on what might have been, we're both okay and that's what matters."

He stared silently at the floor for a long moment, refusing to meet her eyes. She sighed, retracting her hand from his. "Anakin-"

Sudden movement cut her off, as he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist and pulled her into his lap. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his body trembling beneath her hands. Val hesitated for no more than a moment before she wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers threading through his hair.

He breathed deeply, as though fully realising she was alright. His chest shuddered as he whispered, just barely loud enough for her to hear. "Please, don't ever do that to me again."

Val closed her eyes, pressing her cheek against his forehead. "I promise."

author's note

this is another one of my favourite chapters, what really happened on Krownest was finally revealed and new darkside secrets are slowly being revealed! we also got a bit more insight into val's childhood on alderaan, and I've been wanting to use the mirrorbright poem ever since i read bloodline

i'm sorry it's been a while but I've been very preoccupied with other things, however i'm still writing when i can! i promise the kiss is coming up really soon, like in the next couple of chapters 👀

anyways, tell me what you thought! I'll be back soon!